The Keeper of Lost Causes
Director: Mikkel Norgaard
Year: 2013
Rating:
7.5 Country: Denmark
This is the first in a series of so far four Department Q films. If they
are as enjoyable as this one, I hope there will be more. It follows two cops
in Denmark who have been assigned to the Cold Cases. Being a modern Nordic
mystery, you can pretty much count on it being bleak, humorless, cops with
broken lives, complicated murders that often stretch back years and an atmosphere
of cold dread. It must be the long winters. These are based on the books
of Jussi Adler-Olsen, who has written eight of these, most of which I believe
have been translated into English. Admittedly, the main cop treads familiar
ground - divorced, miserable, disliked by all the other cops, surly, headstrong
and very smart. So it isn't necessarily him that makes the film so good -
in fact at times I wanted to kick him for being such an ass - but the case
itself is terrific. I always love mysteries in which to get to the the solution,
you have to go way back. Agatha Christie and Ross McDonald often went into
this territory.
It begins with Carl (our so-called hero played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and two
colleagues on a stakeout and deciding to enter a house before back-up arrived.
It is never really clear what happens but all three get shot - one killed,
one paralyzed and Carl badly hurt. When he comes back to the force he is
told that he is finished in homicide and now heads Dept Q. Cold cases. But
not to solve them but to simply organize them. He is assigned a lowly assistant
- Assad (Fares Fares) who has been stuck in nowheresville as a cop. Unsaid
but clearly indicated is that this is because he is Muslim.
Of course, there would not be much of a film is that what Carl did - he immediately
latches onto a case in which a well-known woman disappeared on a ferry and
it was put down as a suicide. He doesn't buy it though - why would she have
brought along her brother who has brain trauma. And so they begin digging.
Obsessively. Nicely done, good chemistry between the two cops, somewhat logical
and the tension ratchets up. This isn't a whodunit - we have no suspects
until we know who the killer is. It is the process of finding him that is
quite good. And it's Denmark. How many cop films do we get to see from Denmark.
Well, now we have four!
The Absent One
Director: Mikkel Norgaard Year: 2014
Rating:
7.5 Country: Denmark
The two cops, Carl and his partner Assad, who solve cold cases - Department
Q - are back in this second film in the series of four adaptations of the
books of Jussi Adler-Olsen. These four films go in the same order as the
books. This one is much darker and more intense than the first - brutal and
grim and at times difficult to watch. Carl is no more cheerful - if anything
life is dragging him further and further into bitterness and bleakness. Never
smiling, his face often battered, unable to socialize or communicate in much
more than looks, grunts and simple angry sentences. He is not someone
you want to be around, but if you happen to have been murdered, he is the
man you want investigating - no matter how long ago. These films offer no
light - they take place in what is supposed to be one of the most beautiful
cities in the world, Copenhagen - but you would never know by this. Filled
with the excrement of society, the drugs, the dark alleys filled with garbage,
prostitutes who allow themselves to be defiled. It is no picture postcard
to send home.
Carl (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is approached by an older man who is drunk and who
asks Carl if he can look into the 20-year murder of his twins. Carl brushes
him off thinking he is crazy. The man kills himself later that night. The
dead man was a policeman who could never solve it but he leaves behind him
a box full of clues. Now Carl feels obliged to dig through it - but
a man confessed to the crime years ago and was sentenced. For four years.
A rape and two homicides. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark (I
had to get that in there somewhere). What he unravels is a long history of
brutal crimes and rapes by a pair of men that goes all the way back to their
school days. They now have power and wealth. And connections at the highest
levels - even in the police force.
The film plays out in an interesting way - four narratives alternating. Carl
and Assad getting closer, a witness to one of their crimes on the run, pieces
of flashbacks that slowly show us the crimes and the perpetrators realizing
they are being investigated and having to kill the witness. Like the first
one there is no mystery - the criminals are revealed early on - it is the
hunt for the witness that creates a good amount of tension. She turns out
to have more guts than you expect and more guilt than she can handle. The
films have very little action. Basic police procedural with a solid kick
of nerves.
A Conspiracy of Faith
Director: Hans Petter Moland Year: 2016
Rating:
8.0 Country: Denmark
I had initially thought there were only three in the Department Q series
and that I was at an end of them with this one, but I just discovered
another! I am not sure to be relieved or regretful. These are great, but
they gnaw on my nerves like a malicious rat. This one mixes an ugly stew
of faith, brutality, the devil and a serial killer of children. The exact
opposite of my cup of tea. Not for Christmas morning. I wonder if the
books by Jussi Adler-Olsen are as dark and grim as the films. I should read
one. In general, I find that Nordic mysteries really burrow deep into the
dirty past and never come up for air. This one pushes down the gas pedal
from the opening of a fanatically religious mother brutalizing her children
and keeps it there the whole time till the end when it pushes it down further.
The plot itself has been done more than a few times - a serial killer who
always seems to be a step ahead of the cops and a race to save a child -
but much of the film is covered in a layer of grime and despair that makes
it feel visceral. That contrasts to the beautiful shots of rural Denmark
with spectacular vistas of wheat and farm land - but there is evil out there
looking to get in and God is elusive.
Carl (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) from Department Q of the Cold Cases - has nearly
shut down inside. Nearing a nervous breakdown. The sins and the horrors of
life and the inability to save the innocent has caught up with him. He is
unable to leave home and just stares at the walls. His partner Assad (Fares
Fares) slowly pulls him out of his near comatose state by waving a new case
in front of him. A letter in a bottle from eight years ago was found in the
water. It seems to be a call for help from a child. They have few clues but
that is always the case. They build it a bit at a time. Children have gone
missing over the past few years from very religious sects on Christian holidays.
Two more just went missing.
Like the other two the identity of the killer is established early on and
it is the tracking of him that matters. Carl is as surly as ever - a good
looking man in a rough unshaven way but his mouth always turned downwards
as if in contempt marks him as man with problems. He is a man who refuses
to believe in any faith - but as the killer tells him, you have more faith
than any man. You just don't see it. The two cops are great together - ragging
or challenging one another - in this case about the existence of God. Assad
is of course Muslim and that leads to a few pointed remarks about faith -
but their loyalty to one another is unsaid but very much a part of who they
are. The film broke the box office record in Denmark.
The fourth in the Department Q of Cold Cases series. Carl (Nikolaj Lie Kaas)
is as morose as ever with a constant scowl on his face that would scare children
to bed. At one point he smiles and laughs for a moment in the film. Because
he has taken a drug called Hanbane, which if taken in small doses has mild
hallucinating effects like smoking pot. It turns out his smile is scarier
than his scowl. Assad (Fares Fares) - who has become the soul of this series
- has finally had enough of Carl's unsocial behavior and is going to transfer
out in a week. At one point Assad asks Carl, won't you miss me? No.
In three months I won't even remember your name. The secretary Rose (Johanne
Louise Schmidt) who came on in the second film The Absent Ones gets a bigger
role in each film and gets to kick some ass in this one. The three of them
in their own ways are pretty terrific together.
Unlike in their previous cases when it came to them, this time they go after
it. A wall in a home is demolished and behind it is a room with three long-dead
corpses sitting politely at a dinner table. Carl demands to have the case.
Finding out who they are is easy since they all have ID but discovering what
they have in common and who killed them and then sealed the wall is not so
easy. It goes back forty years and that horrifying story is fed to us in
small bite sized flashbacks. A school for troubled girls and a staff that
has peculiar racial and social views. It has long closed but the staff is
still looking for their own final solution. The theory of Cold Winter. A
true theory that as humans migrated into colder climates only the superior
ones could survive thus creating a Master Race that just happens to be white
of course.
As Department Q begins to close in and get to the truth they in turn become
the prey. Not as suspenseful as the earlier films, but it still packs a good
wallop and has some truly evil very socially respectable villains. By going
from tracking down one sadistic killer to a larger stage with a group
of conspirators, it loses some of its sordid intimacy and edge and feels
perhaps a tad more commercial. Good climax and aftermath. Maybe Carl is human
after all.
